For love of a boat – in Northumberland, England

For a Cornishman used to Atlantic swells and surf-swept beaches, inshore craft have always been a facination. As a teenager, I read Edgar March’s ‘Inshore Craft of Britain: in the Days of Sail and Oar’ and was hooked. The facination comes from the way boat design developed over the centuries to suit specific coastlines. Local conditions and local materials requred local solutions.

(WIth no apology for repeating myself) . . . as the world gets flatter, and commercial and political expediency blur the old boundaries, we have gradually (rapidly in many cases) lost the individuality in skills, knowledge and experience that go with it. You can still find it (as with this coble) – but you have to look hard.

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"I am a citizen of the most beautiful nation on earth. A nation whose laws are harsh yet simple, a nation that never cheats, which is immense and without borders, where life is lived in the present. In this limitless nation, this nation of wind, light and peace, there is no other ruler besides the sea."
- Bernard Moitessier